World of Warcraft, Country Style

Anyone who digs violent video games ought to try annihilating the mice in their house. This is not a game for sissies. This is rated Triple-X for real life and real death.

A foe made out of pixels is nothing compared to an enemy who scrabbles inside your walls all night, poops and pees on your stove and kitchen counter to taunt you, chews open triple-wrapped foil to eat your leftover pizza, and can squeeze through a dime-sized hole. Its speed and cunning make mincemeat of human weaponry and strategy.

I like 'em dead.

A cat is its only true match. Without one, I tried mousetraps. Meeses are, however, masters at eating up every atom of peanut butter without triggering the trap. When a trap gets 'em, its fun to see them dead -- their necks slammed flat beneath the wire, their beady eyes wide open, surprised. Crow about your victory, but there's lots more where that one came from, and each generation is bolder and sneakier. They'll peer at me over the sofa back, or run across my bed while I'm sleeping in it. They've stored corn in the bindings of my cookbooks, and in toes of my shoes. Little bastards.

My weapon of choice now is poison. They die. But they return to haunt me. Last year one died beneath the water heater, and the warm rotting corpse, inaccessible, stank ineffably for a full six weeks. The year before one died in the attic right above the bedroom. Little f----r.

One mouse actually crawled into a packing box and moved to a new house with me. For three weeks I worked almost full-time trying to kill it. Then one day, sick from poison it staggered out from beneath a cabinet. I got my broom. But before I put it out of its misery, and out of mine, I granted it its due. "You have been a most worthy opponent," I said, and I meant it.